Thursday, 27 May 2010

As God As I Am

The Amnesty International Report for 2010 provides, as you would expect, some seriously sobering reading.
I downloaded the shortened version and read the entry for South Africa in its entirety. Not happy making at all.

Although, to be fair to my country, what we see here is a mostly potted version of what's happening in the rest of the world - a little more violence against women and children than in Europe, a little less homophobia than the rest of Africa , but more or less what you would expect from a country whose past has been brutal and whose people are still psychological messes as a consequence.

Rape against women and children up over ten percent this year, I see. Over 30,000 cases reported against adult women - so that's not counting the unreported cases and the cases against men, children and infants. Our police, apart from an unnerving tendency to take shoot to kill statements from their officers all too literally, are often severely lacking in the skills and/or empathy to deal with domestic violence and an increasing level of warfare against women.

All of this, of course, points to a practically non-existent level of care for non human life - an attitude I see prevailing amongst our non-peace-force citizens as well.I don't find it necessary to over stress that this level of oblivion to suffering is a major stigmatum of seriously pathological people. As are we all.

Do you remember a time when biologists and psychiatrists were conducting behavioural studies on rats and mice, with nary a whisper of protest from the people? Do you remember one such experiment, repeated more than once, in which the hapless rodents were forced into ever increasing levels of crowding and deprivation? Do you remember the outcome of this experiment?
That's right - the rats began to eat each other.

As we continue to stress ourselves, our non human companions and our land with viciously rising levels of crowding, lack of food and water, poisoning of the environment and plundering of our Mother's resources, we are seeing dread pathologies emerging in the human population. Not only the obvious ones such as cancer and genetic deformity, but the even uglier sicknesses of rat-eat-rat.

I'm not giving any prescient panoramas as to how this story will unfold, or how it will end - there' enough of them out there, you can't miss them. But what I will toss into the ring is a vision I hold onto for dear Life, in these days. A vision which stems from my inmost certain knowledge of Who I am - a vision which is saved from being a simple flight of ego by the inextricably attached proviso that I know, therefore, who You are,too.

Sick and halt, turned murderous and uncaring by our pathologies, we slash and hack our way through it all. But I can see You. And I can see the dust of stars in Your eyes. And the trails of glory behind Your shadow. And I know, through all these bitter tears, that in very fact You are just as I.You are every bit as God as I am. Please, won't You awaken to this Reality?